Shelburne: GPS directions get preacher lost

Gene Shelburne

“Turn right on Overland,” the GPS lady instructed. “Then go under the overpass and turn left on Stamford.”

We did. Both my wife and I thought we knew the way to our motel that night, but our first attempt to find it failed. So Nita pecked the hotel address into her cell phone and Gertrude (or whatever the GPS gal’s name is) started giving us orders.

“Go one-fourth of a mile,” she told us. “Then turn right on Scottish Road.”

The instant we made that turn, I knew something was bad wrong. From an Interstate frontage road we had migrated onto a narrow cow-trail with bathtub-size potholes in the vanishing pavement. Our GPS guide kept barking orders, upbraiding us with “make a U-turn and go back” commands when we disobeyed her. She had taken us behind an abandoned, never-very-nice motel now boarded up and cut off from the world by a tall chain-link fence. Obviously it was not the motel we were looking for. A circuitous three-mile search for a connector street finally took us back to the Interstate intersection where we had started this adventure. This time we switched off Gertrude, who obviously didn’t know that locale, and we decided to try a less-than-obvious route I thought I remembered.

Not bragging, but I did a better job than the GPS lady. I got us into the right motel driveway on my first unaided try.

As we made the last turn into the motel parking lot, I noticed that this street was also named Scottish Road. But this time we were north of the Interstate instead of south, and the fancy motel we found was at least half a century newer than the one the GPS lady preferred.

As we laughed about our misguided excursion, my lady decided we had just been misled by the same GPS navigator who got our daughter and her husband lost in a strange town. They had plugged in the name of a popular restaurant and followed instructions, just as we had. When Gertrude told them they had arrived, they were sitting at the door of a nursing home.

I guess most of us will be someday, but not because we are following erroneous high-tech directions.

“Teach me your way, O Lord,” the psalmist prayed. “Lead me in a straight path.” Unlike GPS, his directions never get us lost.

Gene Shelburne is minister of the Anna Street Church of Christ, 2310 Anna St. Contact him at GeneShel@aol.com, or get his books and magazines at www.annastreetchurch.com. His column appears monthly in the Faith section.